Backstage vs SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Backstage
backstage.io
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
solarwinds.comSide by side
| Figure | Backstage | SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Application Dependency Mapping Software | 8.5 (#4) | 7.6 (#16) |
| Deployment | The standalone installation guide creates a locally running app with an in-memory SQLite database and demo content, and says this setup is not production-ready. | SAM is an Orion module built on the SolarWinds Platform; the company describes its monitoring portfolio as self-hosted and suitable for on-premises and hybrid IT environments. |
| Integrations | Integrations let Backstage read or publish data using providers such as GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, LDAP, and cloud providers. | Supported applications include Microsoft Exchange, IIS, Active Directory, SharePoint, and SQL Server, as well as third-party products such as Oracle, Java, Tomcat, Citrix, and MySQL. |
| Intended users | Backstage is aimed at organizations whose product and engineering teams need a shared developer portal and software ecosystem catalog. | SolarWinds describes SAM as designed for IT teams monitoring servers, applications, and infrastructure across environments of all sizes. |
| Purpose | Backstage is an open-source framework for creating and deploying developer portals, originally created at Spotify. | SAM monitors server and application health, availability, performance, and dependencies from one place. |
| Security | The official threat model outlines security considerations for operators, developers, and security researchers, and points to the project’s security policy for vulnerability reporting. | SolarWinds says its software development methodology follows NIST Secure Software Development Framework and Enduring Security Framework guidelines, and that it conducts regular external penetration tests. |
| Support | The project lists Discord, FAQs, and community resources for support and discussion. | SolarWinds provides technical support, documentation, training, and a user community with more than 200,000 registered members. |
| Templates | Software templates let engineers create components with organizational standards built in. | SAM provides out-of-the-box templates for more than 250 application types, including specialized AppInsight templates for SQL Server, Exchange, IIS, and Active Directory. |
Plans
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
- Server & Application MonitorPriced on request
In their own words
Backstage
Backstage is a free, open-source framework for building and deploying developer portals. Its software catalog records ownership and metadata for services, websites, libraries and data pipelines, for teams managing a small set of services or company catalogs of thousands. Software Templates can fill code skeletons with variables and publish generated projects to destinations such as GitHub or GitLab. TechDocs keeps documentation in a docs-like-code workflow close to code. Integrations can read or publish data through GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, LDAP and cloud providers. Teams can extend a portal with existing open-source plugins or build their own; Backstage Search can index sources such as TechDocs, Confluence and Stack Overflow. Its Kubernetes feature aggregates a service’s deployments through the Kubernetes API. Backstage is self-hosted. The standalone installation guide creates a local demo with an in-memory SQLite database and says this setup is not production-ready. It lists minimum requirements of 20 GB disk and 6 GB memory, with more disk needed as modules and plugins are added. Its threat model describes only rudimentary denial-of-service protection and recommends a protected deployment environment.
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.